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Rethinking the tagging system

The categories system, as it stands now, is something of an
afterthought. It's mostly there since there's supposed to be
one. Nor has it been integrated with any of the other site
functionality. The categories are just something that sit there
on the info page, along with the comic's description. I'm
planning on changing this and to make the tags into an actually
useful feature. Most prominently, this would be a first step in
finally implementing a real search for Piperka. I can tell that
people have a difficult time finding comics on Piperka, since I
see comics submitted under alternate names from time to time.

Reworking the tagging system would, of course, involve changes
to the code. Much of that would be invisible to most users, but
I was thinking of restructuring the tags itself, too. They
cover a rather random and limited collection of concepts,
currently, and I'd like to improve on that. I wouldn't want to
copy what Piperka would use from some other site straight off,
but there's certainly a limit to how much originality I could
put into them. I want to expand what I have now, but I don't
want to just dump everything from TV Tropes into them.

I was thinking of grouping the tags hierarchically. I'd welcome
discussion about how well this scheme would work, and just how
to use it. I'll name a few examples of the kinds of tags I
would use and a few comics they would apply to.

Genre

Perhaps the most obvious one. genre::sci-fi,
genre::fantasy and so on. This would allow for subgenres
too, like genre::sci-fi::steampunk (Girl Genius). I'll
need to do something about the old "fantasy" tag, since plenty
of mismatched things have ended up under that one, mostly due to
the lack of better ones.

Advisory

This one's for things like advisory::graphic violence.
The old "adult" tag would go here too, but that one really ought
to be split to several categories. Some age related rating
might go under this one.

Archetype

And now for something different. I'm not sure what would be an
appropriate name for this hierarchy, but this would be the place
for archetype::elves. I admit that the "elves" tag
started as something of a joke one time when I had added a few
comics to Piperka, all of which featured them. But I wouldn't
want to remove this tag now that I'm (supposedly) starting to
get serious about Piperka, but to expand on the idea. Who
wouldn't want to know whether a comic had recurring character
types like robots (Diesel Sweeties),
vampires (All Roses Have
Thorns), ninjas (The
Adventures of Dr McNinja) or pirates (Cheshire Crossing)
in them.

Art

Not meant to judge anyone's artistic skills. Some comics just
go for a certain style, like art::stick figure (xkcd), art::manga style (Megatokyo) or
art::cgi (The
Challenges of Zona). Others include art::photo,
art::photo::lego and art::photo::figurine.

Format

For things like format::gag-a-day and
format::episodic.

Setting

This one's a bit generic. setting::historical (Cerintha) (or would
it be setting::period?) is a likely candidate, but I'd
expect this group to have subcategories, mostly.

Locality

The place(s) where things happen. For example
setting::locality::urban (Gone with the
Blastwave), setting::locality::wilderness (Wandering Ones) and
setting::locality::space (Outsider), and
even setting::locality::virtual reality (Not A Villain). This might end
up overlapping with the genre category, since sometimes they
imply a certain locality. Like genre::sci-fi::space
opera.

I'm not sure if I should put geographical locations under this
one too. It's a pretty significant part of some comics that the
things in there happen in, say, Japan.
setting::locality::eastern (Dear Korea? Somehow it
feels too specific compared to what I listed above.
setting::culture::eastern might work better. Or
"oriental" instead of "eastern"?

There are still a few things I don't quite know how to place.
Religion is one. topic::religion (Holy Bibble)? Perhaps it
could be something under genre. Also,
topic::politics.

There would be room for letting users to add their own free form
tags to comics and their own reviews and comments, or even for
discussions, but that's something for another time. Even then,
there would be a need for some official (such as it is)
categorization and description for a comic.

Of course, once I get this all implemented, someone would need
to go through all the comics and reassign the categories. I'm
hoping that I could crowdsource that part and let the moderators
sift through it all. For now, I wanted to lay out my ideas and
hopefully get feedback on them. Do head to reddit for
discussion or email me.